


How Brothers Fight

by trustingHim17



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24434209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: The fall from the pier—and knowing that this was the end—hurt much less than the knowledge that he had just left Holmes to face three of the blackguards by himself.Why did Watson know so little about Moriarty in The Final Problem?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	1. Pier

I eyed the ocean surging beneath the pier before returning my focus to the ruffians blocking the pier’s end. One of the five men brandished a knife, and I wished I hadn’t left my revolver back at the hotel.

The trip to the seaside was originally supposed to be a vacation of sorts, mostly for Holmes. He had been working himself to exhaustion on his latest case, and with the case’s conclusion, I had spent nearly a week arguing for us both to leave London for a few days before Holmes finally agreed, however reluctantly. He hated leaving the city for any length of time, but between my practice and the way he attracted cases, I knew he would never be able to rest if we stayed. We had gotten a room in a small town on the sea less than a day’s travel from London.

Planning to stay for four days, we had spent the first day and a half exploring the area. Neither of us had ever been to this particular town, and it was close enough to London for Holmes to want the general layout committed to memory.

The town was small enough Holmes quickly found everything he needed, however, and over lunch, I had convinced him to spend the afternoon of our second day on the pier.

I loved the sound of the waves—always had. I had enjoyed swimming as a child in both fresh and saltwater, before my shoulder wound had taken away my ability to swim, and living in London meant that it had been years since I had been near the pure salt of the sea. I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed the sea spray until we arrived, and I thought it would be nice to spend some time just listening to the surf.

Most of the afternoon had been perfect. The surf was up, and the waves crashed rhythmically on the pier’s supports. The temperature was comfortably warm, and Holmes had even spotted dolphins in the distance shortly after three. It had been a truly enjoyable afternoon, and no matter how much he tried to hide it, I knew I was not the only one who was reluctant for the day to end.

The sun was sinking ever lower, however, and our hotel would be serving supper soon. We had been about to head back to our rooms when someone recognized us.

Turning at the indignant voice calling something about locking up his brother, we found a man I recognized as one who had escaped the net in Holmes’ most recent case. When Holmes had come to my practice close to noon one day, asking if I would be willing to help him wrap up a case, I had readily agreed, and he had given most of the details that night. It had been a sizable smuggling ring, and the ringleader had fallen neatly into Holmes’ trap, but his associate had escaped, purely by chance of him being too close to a window. He had gone to ground, and Holmes’ many contacts had been unable to find him. We had suspected the man had left the city, but there was no way of knowing to which city he had flown. It was this associate who stood before us now, apparently the ringleader’s brother, in business if not blood.

As soon as he knew he had identified us correctly, he had pulled the knife and blocked the pier's exit. After a moment, four more joined him, appearing from the shadows and cutting off the edge of the pier as they moved closer. They watched us for an opening, their intent clear.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Holmes, I watched them closely, identifying who was likely to move first and which was the most dangerous fighter. Holmes and I had taken out more than five before without a problem, but the confines of the pier made this slightly more dangerous. Even with my shoulder nearly pain free due to the more temperate weather, I knew I would never be able to swim in the cold ocean, and the blackguards had trapped us much too close to the railing for comfort.

Keeping our shoulders pressed together, Holmes tried to lead me closer to the middle of the pier. He knew the extent of my swimming ability—or lack of it—but the men closed in too quickly to make it more than a few steps.

Three of the men came for me, one, maybe two, of which I judged as extremely inexperienced fighters, and I covered a smirk, knowing they had spotted my awkward shoulder and had underestimated me. I easily blocked the first punch and threw one of my own. The other man dodged, and the battle instincts took over, narrowing my world to strike, block, dodge, and duck. I was peripherally aware that Holmes pressed against my back, and I knew our attackers were slowly pushing us towards the pier’s edge, but there was little I could do about it without separating from Holmes.

First rule in a fight: side to side and back to back, always. Holmes and I rarely lost a fight when we fought together, no matter how many set upon us.

My main opponents were wearing down. The most experienced—and largest—fighter had stepped back after catching a fist to the temple, blinking the stars out of his vision as the others prevented me from following up. The second man was smaller than even Holmes, and faster than me, but he evidently had little fighting experience, and the other was little better. Without the better fighter to divide my attention, I quickly got an opening, and one ruffian sank to the ground, out cold.

I blocked a fist aimed for my bad shoulder before exchanging several blows with the third man. A stray thought wondered why the first man would travel with such inexperienced fighters, but I had little time to think on it. Inexperienced as he was, my opponent knew enough to drag out the fight, and I wanted to finish him off so I could help Holmes. From what I could tell through Holmes’ movements, Holmes’ opponents were much better fighters. They would have to be, for Holmes was such a spectacular boxer that he would have finished them off by now if they were as inexperienced as my opponents.

I blocked a blow to my chest and got through the man’s guard to land one to his abdomen, bending him double. A quick uppercut to the jaw sent him to the ground, and I glanced around, getting my position as I belatedly realized I had lost track of the first man in the process. Cursing myself for the rookie mistake, I tried to firm my contact with Holmes’ back as I searched frantically for the last man.

Just as I pressed slightly against him, Holmes grunted from the force of a hit and nearly stepped back, knocking me slightly off balance. Holmes’ second opponent abandoned Holmes and forced me to duck a swing at my head. I returned the hit, but Holmes reached the man first, knocking him back several steps, and I took in the situation.

Holmes was facing two at once and keeping them well occupied. I thought I heard him say something occasionally, but I couldn’t be sure over the pounding surf. I knew he wasn’t talking to me. He knew that words faded from my awareness in the midst of a fight.

The fight had pushed us closer to the edge; I was barely three steps away, and I tried to move with Holmes to get us further from the railing. The tide was going out, and there was no way of knowing just how deep the water was. If the water was too shallow, a fall from this height could kill.

Catching on to what I was trying to do, Holmes worked with me, rotating slightly around his opponents so we could walk sideways toward the middle of the pier.

We had barely turned, however, before a squeaking board to my right became my only warning of where the first man had gone.

The man plowed into me from the side, knocking me away from Holmes and toward the railing. I barely prevented myself from going over immediately, but now we were separated. The other two men surrounded Holmes, and I was unable to help as I fought to stay on the pier. The railing was old and brittle, and the force of my impact had shattered it, sending splinters everywhere and doing nothing to prevent me from going over the side. I had nothing to brace myself against, and as off balance as I was, it was pathetically easy for the much larger man to shove me over the edge.

I vaguely heard a shout, but whether it had come from Holmes or myself, I had no idea. I could only hope Holmes had not been injured. I was too busy trying to remember the best way to land.

The water was cold, colder even than I had expected, and I started shivering almost immediately as I fought my way back to the surface with one hand. My bad shoulder hung limply, spikes of pain radiating out from a throbbing center from landing on it, but even that hurt less than the knowledge that I had left Holmes to face the remaining three blackguards by himself.

The water was deeper than I could have wished, perhaps ten feet or so, and certainly too deep to stand, but the depth of the water had saved my life after falling from such a height. The drop from the pier would have been instantly fatal if the water had been a few feet shallower. I found it hard to be grateful, though; the same thing that had saved me was now going to drown me. The tide was going out, I knew, but even the thirty minutes I guessed it would take for the water to become shallow enough to stand would be too long. Combining the frigidness of the water—and my resultant shivering—with the nearly mind-numbing pain radiating from my shoulder, my weak attempts at swimming were barely keeping my head above water.

A wave swamped me, and I came up sputtering and gasping. The sucking motion of the tide was dragging me out, and I fought not only to stay afloat, but also to not float out to sea. Old habits had me try to pull myself up with both arms, and I nearly got a mouthful of seawater when I gasped at the pain. Rolling onto my back, I tried to float, but one arm did not provide enough buoyancy.

Another wave picked me up, nearly slamming me against the pier’s supports before dropping me, and I reflexively grabbed at the slippery wooden pole. My hand brushed against a small dent in the wood. Something had recently chipped the support, removing the few sharp barnacles decorating the support and leaving me just enough to grip with my good arm, and I dug my fingers in. I managed to wrap my legs around the support and grip it well enough to stay there in spite of the waves tugging and crashing into me, and I tried to catch my breath. If I could stay there long enough, the tide would go out, and I would be able to walk back to shore.

I wondered if Holmes was alright, if Holmes even knew I had gone over the edge. Caught up in the fight, especially if his opponents were as skilled as I suspected, there was a chance Holmes hadn’t even noticed when I had disappeared. Without me at his back, the remaining attackers could easily have surrounded him. He was an amazing fighter, but one of the men had a knife, and he was unarmed. I hoped he remained uninjured.

One thing at a time, I reminded myself.

I resettled my grip between waves as my shoulder slowly went numb. My shaking increased with each progressive wave, and the numbness and inability to move my shoulder did nothing for the growing ache in my middle that the shivering caused. The hard knot of pain grew slowly, almost as if the pain was leaving my shoulder to take up residence in my chest. Every shiver pulled at it, and as the shaking made it difficult to grip, so the pain made it difficult to focus. I fought my way through it, clinging to the pier’s support as I took stock of my situation.

I was perhaps a hundred and fifty feet from shore, and I had no idea where in that distance the water grew shallow enough to stand. With the tide going out, it would be suicide to try to swim to shore.

I looked up, but the pier supports were smooth and extremely slippery. There was no way I would be able to climb even another few feet to get out of the waves. From what I could see, the dent I gripped was the only one large enough to support my weight. All the others were too small to provide a stable hold, and the pier supports were much too far apart to hope to reach one from another. The waves would wash me away before I got even halfway to the next support. Going anywhere using the pier supports was out of the question. 

My only option seemed to be to wait out the tide, and I looked down. Despite the high waves, the crashing surf was relatively clear of debris—for which I was thankful—and I tried to gauge the water’s depth. If I could last a few more minutes, I thought, the tide should be far enough out to be able to touch the sand dune I could see below me. That sand dune looked to stretch all the way to shore.

A new set of waves crashed over me, larger than the previous had been, on the heels of that thought, and my hand slipped. I grabbed at the support, frantically trying to keep myself afloat, but the next wave washed me off and back into the crashing surf. My awareness became a dizzying combination of pain, and cold, and trying to keep my head above water.


	2. Search

Sherlock Holmes frantically scanned the water below, looking for any sign of Watson and ignoring the groans of the two still-conscious ruffians that had attacked them. They could go nowhere, tied to the pier as they were, and he needed to find his friend.

The fight hadn’t lasted long after Watson had gone over the edge. With Watson holding his own without a problem, Holmes had been trying to get the leader to talk in a fit of anger. He was on the trail of a network of crime, and if the man gave him another lead, he might be able to bring more of this nebulous network down. All that had been derailed, however, when McClelland had tackled Watson over the side. Quickly dispatching the remaining three and tying up all five, he scanned the water, desperately hoping to see Watson on the surface.

Nothing. All he could see was crashing surf. The ripping ocean wind carried his calls away, and he heard no answer. Too high to safely jump, it would take more time than he had to go around and follow the pier from shore. He found the longest rope near where Watson had fallen and used that to slow his descent before falling the last few feet.

It looked no better from the water’s surface.

He quickly started shivering, the water still cold despite the early-summer temperatures, but he ignored this. Where was Watson? He looked around, desperately searching for any sign of his friend.

“Watson!”

He swam a rough search pattern, starting where Watson should have landed and following the tide out.

“Watson!”

He heard nothing but surf and screeching seagulls, and his heart sank.

No. He refused to believe Watson had drowned so quickly. He had been a competent swimmer before his shoulder wound and would be able to keep himself above water for a few minutes.

So where was he?

He swam another, wider search pattern, ignoring his own shivering as he desperately tried to find his friend, only to come up empty. It had been too long, his mind kept insisting, nearly fifteen minutes since Watson had fallen and much too long for an injured man to hold himself above water, but he refused to believe it. Watson was somewhere.

A wave picked him up, nearly crashing him into the pier as he fought to see above the white capped waves. He threw a hand out, meaning to prevent an impact with the wood supporting the pier, and his fingers brushed something. He reflexively grabbed, pulling the object closer before he registered the dark jacket in his hand.

Watson floated next to him, face down, limp.

He hurriedly pulled the doctor’s head out of the water. Almost immediately, Watson took a breath, coughing, and Holmes himself could suddenly breathe again.

“Watson! Open your eyes, Watson!” No response. “Come on, Watson. Wake up!”

Holding his friend on the water’s surface, he tapped the doctor’s face, trying to get him to speak, move, anything, but Watson was exhausted from keeping himself afloat for so long. He remained limp, motionless but for the tremors shaking his body. His violent shivering turned his shallow breaths into gasps, and Holmes was suddenly conscious of his own shivering. Firmly holding Watson above the water, he slowly pulled them back to shore.

With the receding tide, they didn’t have far to go before the water became shallow enough to walk, but Watson still remained limp, unresponsive. Holmes carried him, staggering his way up the sand near the pier to lay the shivering doctor on his side.

Watson immediately started coughing up seawater, and Holmes' worry warred with his relief. Relief, that Watson was still coherent enough to fight for breath without help. Worry, that Watson's shivering was decreasing despite his wet clothes. He tried again to get the doctor to respond, to wake up so they could get back to the hotel and get warm, but Watson never moved from where he had collapsed back into the sand when the spasms finally ceased.

The hotel was too far away. There was no way he would be able to carry the doctor all the way back. Help. He needed to get help.

Wrapping Watson in a decrepit but dry blanket he found rotting in the sand, he sprinted his way up the beach towards town. Even in a town as small as this, someone was bound to be out this time of night.


	3. Fighting

Wet.

Cold.

Pain.

My awareness had narrowed to those three things. I was cold. I was exhausted from fighting to keep my head above water, a hard enough task with two good arms and nearly impossible with only one. I was sick of spitting seawater out of my mouth, of blowing it out of my nose. My clothes were heavy with salt and frigid seawater, and they dragged me down. I had fought hard. I wanted to stay afloat long enough to make it to shore, but it felt like I had been fighting forever, and I was tiring. Between sets, I had maneuvered my jacket to provide a scant amount of flotation, but it was getting harder to keep that bubble of air in front of me, harder to keep from floating face down like so many corpses I had seen in the Thames.

Had it been five minutes? Or an hour? Was I still near enough to shore that I could hope to touch bottom soon? Or had the tide pulled me out to sea?

I had no idea, and I wasn't entirely sure I cared.

I was in a numb sort of agony from the cold. My arms and legs were quickly going numb, but the ache in my shoulder had navigated to my core, pulling and stabbing with every involuntary shiver. Part of me knew I would be in more danger when the shivering stopped, but all I could think was that the pain in my middle was getting harder and harder to ignore. Somehow, it was even worse than my shoulder’s normal cold-weather complaints, probably because I knew it would stop if I could only stop shivering.

A wave swamped me yet again, and my jacket slipped. My pocket of air traveled around behind me, and the wave rolled me over. I no longer had the strength to pull myself back up.

This was the end, as I had known from the moment my feet had left the pier. Had Holmes come out of the fight uninjured? How long had it taken him to realize I had fallen in? I hoped he wouldn't blame himself.

I had instinctively held my breath when my face went under, and it was getting harder to overcome the need to breathe. Would it hurt, when I finally lost the fight and inhaled water? Or would I pass out first? I hoped the latter. I would hold my breath until I passed out before I purposely inhaled water, but my thoughts were getting murky, and I had nearly inhaled several times already before I caught myself. I had swallowed more water with each swamping wave. It wouldn’t take much more.

Darkness was beginning to take over, and I focused on Mary, then on Holmes, wanting my last thoughts to be of them.

I wished I could tell Mary I loved her one more time. I hoped she would eventually move on, find someone else. I loved her too much to want her to remain alone after I was gone. Would she keep up contact with Holmes? It was possible, I supposed. The two most important people in my life had spent some time together, mostly when the three of us went out to dinner or attended a concert, and they had seemed to hit it off when Mary caught one of Holmes’ vaguer references to some obscure musical piece of which I had never heard. The two had spent the entire evening comparing different composers while I listened on. I hoped they would stay in contact, if only so they wouldn’t be entirely alone after I was gone. Holmes had a distressing tendency to withdraw from the world at times, and he needed someone there to pull him back. If I couldn’t do that for him, maybe Mary could. I remembered Mary the last time I had seen her, at the train station. I had been so grateful for her support of this trip. I pictured her, there on the platform, a figure in blue slowly growing smaller as the train moved further away. I was sorry it was ending like this, but I could think of no way I’d rather go than in defense of Holmes.

Side to side and back to back. Someone had told me that was how brothers fought. It was how Holmes and I fought, anyway, each protecting the other. We had been winning until I had lost track of an opponent.

I hoped he knew I had enjoyed our adventures together, that I had even enjoyed this trip, short as it had been. My marriage and practice had made it difficult in recent years to spend time together, to work together on his cases as we had for so many years, and I had greatly enjoyed following him around a city once again, appreciated a simple afternoon spent on the pier, watching dolphins, fighting the seagulls, and deducing impossible information about the people around us. How he could tell a man had moved to England after falling in the Venice canals one too many times I had no idea, but the glare the man had sent us when he overheard Holmes’ deduction had set me to laughing and sparked one of Holmes’ rare smiles.

I wouldn't trade a moment of it for the world.

I was fading. I knew I had mere seconds left, and I clung to that memory, of the two of us on the pier, laughing. I wanted that to be my last conscious thought.

Another wave picked me up, but a disturbance in the water shoved me before the wave finished. There was pressure, pulling. I could feel something moving me, then air on my face. I gasped, desperately trying to pull air into my oxygen-deprived body, but coughed instead, gagging on the seawater in my lungs.

I vaguely heard a voice, telling me to wake up, to talk to the speaker, but exhaustion pulled at me. I was so tired, it was all I could do to keep fighting to breathe. I clung to consciousness, half-afraid I would forget to breathe if I fell asleep, but I couldn’t find the energy to respond. Even the air seemed cold to me, though I knew that it had been a comfortable sixty degrees when we were on the pier. I knew that was important, but my thoughts were too murky to remember why.

I was being dragged, first through the water, then up onto the sand. Holmes—for it could only be he—laid me on the sand, out of reach of the water, and the change in position set me to coughing.

Hard, deep coughs warred with my attempts to breathe as I coughed up all the water I had swallowed, and I fought for air even as I was grateful to get that burning water out of my stomach, out of my lungs.

I lay limp on the sand when the spasms finally ceased, utterly spent. Holmes’ voice came again, demanding I wake up, demanding I answer him. I tried to open my eyes, to show him I was awake though I lacked the energy to reply, but I was too exhausted to do even that.

Something wrapped around me, ragged and limp but providing a touch of warmth, and Holmes’ presence receded as he said something about getting help. Or was it needing help? I wasn’t sure.

I seemed to be getting warmer. My shivering was slowing, at any rate, and I was glad. The decrease in my tremors meant the hard knot of pain in my core decreased as well, and I would have sighed in relief if it wouldn’t have set me to coughing again.

Something in me chimed that this wasn’t a good thing: how could I be getting warmer when I was still lying in the wind in soaking wet clothes?

I disregarded the voice. My shivering was slowing, and I felt warmer. Sleep pulled at me again, and this time, I let it.


	4. Follow

Movement and a change in position jolted me to semi-awareness, and irritation shot through me. I was so tired. Just let me sleep! I tried to push away the hands grabbing at me, but my arms refused to respond.

Numb with cold, I barely felt what was probably several hands gripping me, rolling me, moving me. The movement was making me dizzy, disoriented, and I wished the hands would stop, would leave me alone. I was tired. Couldn’t they see I was trying to sleep?

Even the gentlest movement felt like a speeding hansom in my disoriented state, and I was infinitely grateful when the world stopped spinning and moving around me. The multiple pressure points disappeared, and the movement changed form. A steady tapping reached my ears.

The sound lulled me back to sleep.

When I next became aware, I was warm, so comfortably warm I was reluctant to move. I was lying flat on my back, wrapped in a cocoon of many blankets. Heat pulsed around me, and I slowly recognized the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

It was so nice to be warm. I wanted to sink back to sleep, to just enjoy this warmth surrounding me. Surely, I didn’t have somewhere I needed to be? I could be free to lie in bed and doze for a while.

I slowly realized a hand gripped my own, and the strangeness of it stopped my descent back into slumber. Why was a hand gripping mine? It was much too large to be Mary’s hand. Besides, hadn’t I gone on a trip with Holmes? And why did my hand feel so much larger than it should?

Curiosity pushed away the desire for more sleep, and as I became more aware, I realized I wasn’t in my bed, whether in Baker Street, my house, or in the hotel room I last remembered. This mattress was softer, and there were blankets beneath me instead of a sheet. Where was I?

I thought about that for a moment. Why wasn’t I in my hotel room? Holmes had run himself to exhaustion with that last case, and I had convinced him to take a short trip to the seaside. I remembered exploring the town with him, glad of his presence just as much as his renewed energy. A change of scene and a small goal had drawn him out of the stress and lack of sleep that had been pushing him towards illness for the last month.

I remembered lunch at the hotel after he had mapped the small town, and I remembered convincing him to do…something. What had we done after lunch?

It took a long moment, but a memory finally came: the two of us on the pier, dolphins in the distance, laughing at the glare the Italian was sending our way.

That was right. We had spent the afternoon on the pier. But that still didn’t explain why my hand felt abnormally large, nor why another hand was holding mine.

“Watson?”

Another memory floated to the surface: five men standing at the end of the pier, followed by a long fall ending in a cold splash.

The fight. Falling. Drowning. Rescue. Cold.

It all flooded back, and I fought now to wake fully. Was Holmes alright? Had he been injured?

“Watson, are you awake?”

The voice penetrated my awareness, but it took a long moment to identify the speaker, and even longer to make sense of the words.

Holmes. The voice was Holmes’, and he sounded distressed.

Distressed? That wasn’t right. Was he hurt? I fought harder, climbing my way back to consciousness. Had the leader’s knife scored a hit? Had one of the men shoved him off the pier, too? If he had fallen very long after me, the water could have been too shallow.

“Watson, can you hear me?”

I could probably rule out falling from the pier, I decided. While distressed, his voice was too steady to be injured that badly. Holmes could hide a lot of injuries, but I rather doubted he would be fully able to hide that. The knife, then? Did he sound so distressed because he had a knife wound?

My eyelids felt like lead weights, and it took a long time to force one eye open, then the other. I stared up at the ceiling. Just opening my eyes had tired me, and I lay still a moment, pushing away the fatigue as I tried to decide where I was. The ceiling looked like the one in our hotel room, with its ornate designs carved into the wood near the ceiling, but that it wasn’t my room I was fairly convinced.

“Watson, answer me.” There was a gentle squeeze on my hand, just enough to feel, and I focused my wandering attention. Holmes. Was Holmes injured?

Sliding my gaze over, I saw Holmes leaning forward in a chair beside the bed, eyes on me. There was a blanket at his feet, where it had fallen when he sat up, but the dark circles under his eyes showed his lack of sleep. How long had he been sitting there?

“H—?” I had barely formed the word before I started coughing, and I buried my face in the pillow as my harsh, rasping coughs shook the bed and tortured my raw throat. When I turned back, Holmes had a cup of hot tea ready.

I tried again after a few sips. “Thank you.” My sore throat kept my voice quiet, but at least I could speak without coughing. I scanned him as he set the cup on a nearby table, searching for injuries, but could find nothing. Why had he sounded so distressed?

“How are you feeling?”

I thought about that for a moment, deciding what I wanted to admit. The more I woke up, the more I was hurting, but I saw no reason to announce that. “Tired,” I finally said. “Warm. Where are we?”

“Do you remember what happened?” he asked instead of answering.

“Fight on the pier,” I said shortly, trying to compensate for my increasing fatigue. “Cold water. Waves.”

He nodded. “When I finally found you, you were under the pier, face down. You wouldn’t respond, even once we got back to shore. Some passerby called a doctor for you and the police for those who attacked us. They helped me carry you to a wagon we could use to get back to the hotel. You are in my room.” He paused a moment, that strange distress in his gaze not quite hidden, and my brow furrowed as I tried to decipher what would have him so upset.

“How long?” How long was I in the water? How long has it been? I wanted both questions answered, but I let him choose the order. It might tell me why he was so upset.

“It is after noon, on our third day since London.” I had been asleep for a full day, which explained why he looked so worn, but not fully why he was so distressed. That also meant we were supposed to return to London the next day, and I wondered if he had already changed our travel plans. The thought crossed my mind bemoaning that I would spend nearly half of one of Holmes’ rare vacations asleep. Maybe I could convince Anstruther to take my practice for a few more days? But would I be able to convince Holmes to stay out of London longer? I would come back to that later.

“And the water?”

He looked at me a moment, perhaps trying to decide what I was asking. The effort to stay awake was making it hard to speak in full sentences. “How did you keep yourself afloat for so long?”

I would have laughed if I weren’t so tired. Typical Holmes, answering a question with another question. At least this time part of the answer I had wanted was included in his question. I could get the exact answer later.

“Wave pushed m’into a support,” I answered, my words running together as I fought to stay awake. “Support had a handhold.”

A touch of pleasure lit his gaze at my resourcefulness, but he didn’t respond, and I looked around as best I could without sitting up. Blankets were piled atop me, so heavy that I knew my perceived weakness was at least partly due to their combined weight. My medical bag was open on the foot of my bed, and I realized my hands felt so large because each finger had been wrapped in warm bandages.

I tried to figure out what I had injured, but my whole body hurt from the cold. Had I cut myself on the pier support? Had there been a barnacle I had not noticed? Or something in the surf? What kind of injury would require bandages over my entire hand?

“Mild frostbite,” Holmes’ calm voice cut into my musings, and I startled slightly. Worry flickered across his gaze when I looked up, and I wondered if I had successfully smothered my jump. I was tired enough I had momentarily forgotten he was there.

Confusion coursed through me. How had I gotten frostbite on my fingers from falling into the ocean? Frostbite was caused by exposure to temperatures below freezing. The water had been cold, but not frozen, and the air on the pier had been merely cool.

He read my confusion as easily as always. “The wind, on the beach. I got your jacket off and wrapped you in a blanket I found, but you refused to keep your hands covered.”

I thought about that for a moment. Either I was more confused than I thought, or he was skipping details. I let it pass on the hopes I could figure it out later, when I wasn’t so tired.

“How bad?” Was I in danger of losing my fingers?

He must have seen the thought on my face, for he was quick to reassure me. “The doctor said the swelling would go down in a few days. You can check it yourself later, when I change the bandages.”

I nodded. I had come out with many bruises, probably some splinters, hypothermia, and mild frostbite. Not bad, considering… I let the thought trail off. Holmes was uninjured, and most of my questions had been answered. I seriously debated going back to sleep.

“Considering what?”

I looked up at him from inspecting my hands, gently flexing my fingers as I wondered how he had been warming the bandages. In front of the fireplace, maybe? It took a moment for me to realize I had spoken the last part of my previous thought aloud. “Nothing.”

“Watson.” He refused to let the matter drop. “Not bad considering what?”

I let my eyes drift closed as I answered reluctantly, and perhaps a bit more bluntly than I should have. I can only blame it on the heavy fatigue weighing me down. It was making it hard to think, and I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. “Consid’ring I didn’t expect t’ survive falling off a pier.”

Silence answered me, and I cracked an eye open, wondering if I had missed his response. His brow had furrowed, and he seemed paler than he had a moment before. I pulled myself back towards wakefulness. Something was wrong here. This was more than his usual concern when I got injured. I remembered the distress in his voice when I woke and realized I hadn’t yet figured out its cause.

I was definitely more confused than I had originally thought, to lose track of a question so important.

“Y—” His voice cracked, and he turned away but didn’t quite hide the hard swallow. “You nearly didn’t,” he got out, and I understood.

“Not your fault.”

He glared at me. “They attacked because of _my case_.”

“Not your fault,” I repeated. “Did you shove me off th’ pier?” He stared at me. “No matter what their reas’ning,” I insisted, “ _you_ are not t’ blame for one o’ _them_ shoving me off a pier.” I hoped my words were not as slurred as they sounded to my ears. It was taking everything in me to stay awake with the heavy fatigue pressing me into the blankets.

“They would not have attacked if not for my case.”

“Then someone else would have,” I replied, forcing the words I knew he needed to hear when all I wanted to do was sleep. There was no room for choppy sentences here. If I didn’t spell it out, his baseless perceived guilt would continue to chase him around in circles, and there was no way I could handle one of his Black Moods on top of the aftereffects of hypothermia. I forced myself to speak slowly and put the required effort into _not_ slurring my words, though I am not sure how much I succeeded. “It doesn’t matter where we go, Holmes, someone is bound to recognize you. Just be glad it’s a positive thing most of the time.”

No reaction, even to my oblique reference to the occasional hated requests for autographs he got. His focus remained on picking at one of my blankets.

“Both of us have been injured before due to cases,” I told him, “sometimes badly. Why did this time affect you so much?”

His head snapped up, a now furious gaze shooting to pin me against the pillow. He didn’t respond with words, but his reaction alone told me much. I may not be able to deduce everything about a stranger on the street, but I knew Holmes.

“It’s because we were between cases, isn’t it?” He stared at me, a minute amount of shock rippling across his gaze. “Because we were attacked when we were supposed to be relaxing for a few days and you had no active cases.”

His expression cleared, and again all I could see was the collected mask to which he always clung, but he nodded. “It is one thing for you to follow me into danger on a case. That is a choice on your part, and we’ve been over that…”

He trailed off, struggling to find the words to continue, so I did it for him. “But this time I got hurt simply by association.”

He nodded, looking back down at the uppermost blanket covering me. I squeezed the fingers still resting in my own, hiding a wince at the pain that action caused.

“Holmes.” He looked up at my tone, and I continued when I held his gaze. “How many times do I have to show you, before you finally understand that I would follow you anywhere?”

He stared at me, surprise and gratitude in his gaze for the briefest moment before resolution replaced them.

Why did I get the feeling he had just made a decision I wouldn’t agree with?

I tried to ask, tried to make him tell me what he had just decided that I wouldn’t appreciate, but my eyes were closing despite my attempts to keep them open. The fatigue was catching up with me, and I could no longer push it away.

The blankets resettled around me, and I felt a hand on my wrist.

“My dear Watson.”

The familiar words swirled around me, carrying such fondness as I had never heard from Holmes, and I wondered if he had said them. Had I slipped into dream so quickly?

I never could be sure, as I fell asleep moments later.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are greatly appreciated on all my stories :)


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